Miss Barbara stood silent for some moments while Willy vainly endeavored to thread the point of her needle. "Willy," said Miss Barbara, "did you come into my room last night, and look at the bill which was on my table?" Now Willy dropped her needle, thread, and handkerchief, and stood up. "Yes, I did!" said she. Miss Barbara was now quite pale. "And you read the note which Mr. Bullock had put at the bottom of it?" "Yes, I read it!" said Willy. "And don't you know," said the other, "that to do such a thing was most--" "Yes, I do!" interrupted Willy. "I knew it then and I know it now, but I don't care any more now than I did then! I put it there because I wanted to! And if you'll take it, Miss Barbara, and pay it back to me any time when you feel like it,--and you can pay me interest at ten per cent if you want to, and that will make it all right, you know; and oh, Miss Barbara! I know all about that sort of bill, because they used to come when my father was alive. And if you'd only take it, you don't know how happy I would be!" At this she began to cry, and then Miss Barbara burst into tears, and the two sat down beside each other on a lounge and cried earnestly, hand in hand, for nearly ten minutes. "I'm so glad you'll take it!" said Willy, when Miss Barbara went into her room, "and you may be just as sure as you're sure of anything that nobody but our two selves will ever know anything about it!" Immediately after luncheon Miss Barbara went by herself to the post-office, and when she came back her sister said to her that New York must just be beginning to agree with her. "It is astonishing," said Miss Eleanor, "how long it takes some people to get used to a change, but it often happens that if one stays long enough in the new place, great benefit will be experienced, whereas, if the stay is short, there may be no good result whatever!" That afternoon Mrs. Cliff actually laughed at Miss Barbara--a thing she had never done before. They were in a large jewelry store where they were looking at clocks, and Miss Barbara, who had evinced a sudden interest in the beautiful things about her, called Mrs. Cliff's attention to a lovely necklace of pearls. "If I were you," said Miss Barbara, "I would buy something like that! I should not want to wear it, perhaps, but it would be so delightful to sit and look at it!" The idea of Miss Barbara thinking of buying necklaces of pearls! No wonder Mrs. Cliff laughed. When the party returned to Plainton, Mrs. Cliff was amazed to find her new house almost completely furnished; and no time was lost in proposing the Thorpedyke project, for Mrs. Cliff felt that it would be wise to make the proposition while the sense of companionship was still fresh upon them all.